April 22, 2012

Blue Moon Cupcakes with Orange Cream Cheese Frosting

I’m severely backlogged on posts due to some fun and not-so-fun distractions stemming from the last few weeks, but I’m trying to make some headway here!

Jared’s New Year’s resolution for 2012 was to only eat desserts that were homemade, so Bernie and I wanted to bake for his birthday last month. Bernie churned out some fantabulous Cherry Garcia cookies, and I took a little culinary leap of faith on these Blue Moon cupcakes. Jared is a big beer guy and loves Blue Moon, so I thought a combination of something delectable with beer could be fun. I found the recipe on Erica’s Sweet Tooth.

After baking the cupcakes, I was worried that there wasn’t going to be enough of a Blue Moon taste to them considering the alcohol probably burned off in the baking process. I went ahead brushed the tops of the cupcakes with the left over beer, despite the fact that my entire kitchen smelled like Blue Moon by the time they came out of the oven.

Ever since I made those Mummy Cupcakes last Halloween, I’d also been wanting to learn how to make my cupcakes look prettier. I bought a couple of frosting tips from Michael’s but neglected to get a coupler. So, I made another makeshift pastry bag and scotch-taped the tip to the parchment paper.

Makeshift Frosting Bag - First Time Using a Piping Tip! — Makeshift Frosting Bag – First Time Using a Piping Tip!

The frosting was sweet and lighter than your typical cream cheese frosting. I probably added about twice as much orange zest than the recipe called for to help with the orange flavoring. If you like the taste of Blue Moon, you will like these cupcakes. If you don’t like the taste of beer in general, you probably won’t like these. Plain and simple!